Like traditional advertising, advertising displayed to a user through a computing device attempts to elicit a desired response from the user, such as to cause the user to purchase the advertised product or service. And like traditional advertising, advertising displayed to users through a computing device has a greater chance of eliciting the desired response from the user if the displayed advertising is relevant, or meaningful, to the user. Unlike traditional advertising, however, advertising displayed to users through a computing device can be based on information derived from that user's interactions with that computing device. Thus, while traditional advertising is only generically targeted, such as, for example, by placing advertisements for men's products in automotive-centric publications, advertising displayed to users through a computing device can be targeted much more specifically. For example, a user that has searched for specific terms can be assumed to be interested in products associated with those terms, and advertisements for such products can be displayed to such a user.
One mechanism for collecting information about a user, that can be utilized to target advertisements to be displayed to that user through a computing device, is to observe the behavior of the user in their interaction with the computing device. For example, as indicated previously, the words or phrases that a user enters into a search engine can be utilized to target specific advertisements to such a user. Other meaningful behavior of the user and their interaction with the computing device can include the types of websites, or other informational content, that the user consumes via the computing device, and the duration and frequency of the consumption of such informational content. Thus, a user that visits automotive-centric informational content on a frequent basis may be targeted with automotive-centric advertising, while a user that visits such automotive-centric informational content only rarely may not be so targeted.